Usually, leading indicators are safety metrics of what is put into the safety program, such as safety training, safety meetings, created policies/procedures, or issue management. Leading indicators are a hallmark of proactive risk management. A useful way to think about leading indicators is:

The frequency of something that is done (i.e., frequency of safety meetings);

Or behavior that involves acting on the safety program (i.e., average time toimplementactions).

In and of themselves, leading indicators are merely interesting metrics for better understanding your aviation SMS program. Where leading indicators become valuable is:

When comparing to aviation KPIs; or

When comparing to aviation lagging indicators.

For example, correlating the number of internal inspections (leading) with critical-risk reported safety issues (lagging) will provide the necessary reference point to assess the value of the leading indicator. Correlating leading indicators metrics well involves hunches, experience, and assumptions by aviation safety managers.

Can Any Aviation SMS Program Use Leading Indicators?

Usually, leading indicators are not adopted in aviation SMS programs until fairly far along in implementation. In fact, safety programs in phase 4 or completed implementation should develop leading indicators. This is because well implemented safety programs have:

Well-developed historical safety data;

Many implemented risk controls;

Robust reactive risk management operations;

Larger safety budgets and more developed risk management tools; and

Reached the performance plateaus that can only be improved with proactive risk management operations.

Safety programs in early phases of implementation can also develop a handful of leading indicators, but in general their resources and time will usually be better spent:

A good idea for such programs is to choose 4 or 5 straightforward leading indicators and monitor them from the early phases of implementation.

Are Leading Indicators Different In Aviation Industry?

Leading indicators are more or less the same across all industries in the sense that leading indicators:

Address precursors and underlying causes;

Are the input of the safety performance; and

Share common themes across all industries.

Such themes are things like:

Employment metrics (i.e., average turnover rate);

Promotional metrics (i.e., frequency of safety meetings);

Incident management efficiency metrics (i.e., average days to close safety issues); and

Bureaucracy metrics (i.e., % jobs that have checklists).

The difference across industries will simply be the “language” and the specific “thing” that the safety metrics measures, but in general leading indicators are addressing the same thematic things.

Where Leading Indicators are in Safety Incidents

To use leading indicators correctly, you need to understand what they are addressing. As discussed, they address the underlying causes of safety performance. But what does that mean? Underlying causes are the:

Lagging indicators’ usefulness is for seeing the performance of an aviation SMS program.Aviation SMS safety performance is the “output” of the program. Lagging indicators answer the WHAT of how the safety program is performing, but doesn’t necessarily answer the WHY of performance.

Leading indicators are used to answer the WHY of safety performance.

Examples of Great Leading Indicators

A few of the most “useful” leading indicators that most aviation safety programs can adopt without sophisticated risk management tools are: